Welcome to Litsy!

(1980) The best stories in this collection feature rich imagery, complex characters, and ambiguous realities. My favorites were "The Death of Doctor Island," set in a psychiatric treatment facility in orbit around Jupiter; and "Tracking Song," whose amnesiac hero navigates a wilderness of violence and maybe cannibalism as he tries to return to the flying transport from which he may have fallen. This was my #DoubleSpin for April.

Winter comes to water as well as land, though there are no leaves to fall.

#FirstLineFridays
@ShyBookOwl

Rule 5 for how to read Gene Wolfe.
😂🤣😂 “Gene is throwing the knives.” 😂🤣😂
#NeilGaiman #TheViewFromTheCheapSeats #GeneWolfe

Even though it was the standard Gene Wolfian nigh-impenetrable mystery box, I felt a bit more prepared for the narrative shenanigans of In Green‘s Jungles than I was with On Blue‘s Waters.

Have Horn and Silk merged personalities which was alluded to in the previous book? Decidedly yes. How? Eh, says Wolfe, it‘s really not that important.

Reptilian space vampires! Oreb is back! Dream teleportation! New Sun references!!! One more book to go.

While his plots are obscure, Wolfe always writes about spiritual matters with brilliant clarity.

Just as Severian investigated & evaluated his relationships with the Increate and the Conciliator (roughly God & Jesus) in the Book of the New Sun, Patera Silk casts off the false gods of Mainframe to follow the one true God, the Outsider, in the Book of the Long Sun.

Horn, his protégé, continues that relationship here in the Book of the Short Sun.

My students asked me what this is about.
*deep breath*

Horn (in-universe author of the previous 4 books) set out to find Silk (who the 4 books were about). Silk and Horn merge minds in a vague way.

Now he‘s Incanto (or Rajan in the previous book) & is writing about things that are happening to him as well as what happened to him in the past while sometimes skipping ahead to mention things he will be telling us about later.

Also space vampires.

#Starting

I am well aware that my current headspace might not be conducive to a super-dense science fantasy with multiple layers of unreliable narrators and text that will need to be continually reread to unlock its mysteries... but that‘s just how Gene Wolfe rolls and I‘m still aiming to finish his 12-book Solar Cycle this year.

This will be the first of his books that I‘ve read since his passing...

Rest In Peace 📚

#genewolfe

So let's peel this narrative onion: Horn, in-universe author of the preceding 4 books about Patera Silk, leaves his family on the ocean planet Blue to search for Silk.

He wrote of this search as an old man, the captive mayor of a city-state at war.

These writings were found by his lost family who provide editorial comments.

Timelines blend in the Gene Wolfiest of ways. Also space vampires. Also maybe Silk and Horn have merged? Or something?